BP P.L.C. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore

A federal appellate court has jurisdiction to consider all of a defendant’s grounds for removal under 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d). Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the 7-1 majority opinion of the Court.  Section 1447(d) provides that “an order remanding a case to the State court from which it was removed is not reviewable on appeal or otherwise, except that an order remanding a case to the State court from which it was removed pursuant to section 1442 or 1443 of this title shall be reviewable by appeal or otherwise.” In this case, the defendants had relied on the federal officer removal statute in § 1442, which is precisely one of the situations in which § 1447(d) permits an appeal. While the Fourth Circuit interpreted the provision as authorizing only the part of the district court’s order discussing § 1442, the ordinary meaning of § 1442—particularly the use of the word “order”—does not support that interpretation. Rather, § 1447(d) permits appellate review of the district court’s remand order without qualification. This conclusion is consistent with the Court’s most analogous precedent, Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A., v. Calhoun, 516 U.S. 199 (1996), in which it held that another provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), which allows a district court to certify “an order,” is not tied to the particular question formulated by the district court. Finally, the Court found Baltimore’s policy arguments “cannot overcome a clear statutory directive.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored a dissenting opinion, arguing that the Court’s holding allows defendants to “sidestep” § 1447(d)’s bar on appellate review simply by “shoehorning a § 1442 or § 1443 argument into their case for removal.” This, Justice Sotomayor argued, “lets the exception swallow the rule.” Justice Samuel Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.